Are you ready for your MUG SHOT!
It’s the hot gadget to help selfie fans espresso themselves by turning them into snapuccinos
IT’S been especially concocted for the ‘Me generation’ – a coffee maker that does cappuccino at the touch of a button with your face painted in the froth.
This bizarre new gimmick is the latest in an ever more cut-throat coffee market. And now the £1,100 Ripples machines are heading to coffee shops in Britain – and will be at work in the next few weeks.
They have already been trialled with first-class and businessclass passengers on Lufthansa flights, and at Wimbledon. The ‘selfies’ are the most eye-catching features but the machines can also supply thoughtprovoking quotes to sit amid the bubbles.
Hundreds of machines have already been sold across America, South Korea, China, Singapore and Israel.
They work by using a tiny amount of liquid coffee extract which acts as an inkjet to ‘print’ any image on to the foam in just under ten seconds.
It seems there is no end to the lengths coffee shops will go to in a British market estimated to be worth £3.4billion last year – up from a mere £137million in 1997.
Such is our appetite for a decent brew that fresh ground coffee is now cheaper than jars of instant. Other cuttingedge developments include rainbow lattes, flavoured with beetroot and turmeric, and nitro cold brew coffee infused with nitrogen.
Bulletproof coffee, which includes a knob of butter, claims to aid weight loss and boost brain power, while ‘death wish’ coffee is billed as the strongest in the world.
Britain’s coffee connoisseurs could soon give wine sommeliers a run for their money with their knowledge of the different beans, coffee machines and gadgets. But the arrival of the Ripples ‘snapuccino’ is surely their strongest bet so far.
Yossi Meshulam, chief executive of parent company Steam CC, said: ‘The country is witty enough to appreciate the combination of great coffee and the brilliant quotes that come on top of it.’
But whether you favour machines that give you coffee on tap or those with dual boilers for coffee and steam, beware: they will burn a hole in your pocket…
‘It prints an image in ten seconds’